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This is the official site for Mike O'Donnell.

“Treasure! How can I have forgotten? Horan’s treasure is priceless. But his daughter Tamar’s is…beyond price.”

Amy Carlyle and young Professor ‘Sherlock’ Holmes inherit Horan’s Aramaic scrolls and the vivid letters of a young Roman telling of the secret hoard.

Amy’s half-brother and the gangster Sykes have their own plans for the buried prize on the shores of the Dead Sea.

The site near Qumran again sees violence and a staggering revelation.

Tales from the Frontier - No. 11

Attitude is a little thing that makes a BIG difference. - Winston Churchill

Social Media and TV commentators bang on nowadays about attitude. Mostly concerning modern youngsters and their lack of it, or their having an overabundance of the bad kind. All wonderfully inconsistent. Anyone who has suffered teenage children will know all about this fluctuating trait.

In the distant days when most youngsters were shy and spotty-faced, attitude was much less ‘in your face’. The average schoolboy addressed every male adult as ‘Sir’ and only laughed, mocked, or vented their disgust in private behind the bike sheds. Schoolgirls wore pigtails, white ankle socks and neat dresses and only swore in secret. Many could actually do joined-up writing and kept a diary. They didn’t want equality because they knew they already had an advantage over boys. Neither juvenile gender (and only two were recognised) would dream of setting upon the elderly and giving them a good kicking.

The generational changes are indeed BIG.

Part of the reason for current attitudes is the assumption that everyone has rights and very few accept that responsibility goes hand in hand with that. “Are you ‘dissing’ me?” implies that the dissee (he who has been dissed) has the automatic right to respect without earning it. There is a general sense of entitlement which is relatively new (if you’re a mature person) and historical (if you think great age means the distant past before iphones were prevalent). Nobody seems to believe in starting at the bottom and working their way up. Quite a few don’t even believe in working. Which is just as well because career choices aren’t what they used to be. Indeed, careers aren’t what they used to be. Except for the Civil Service, jobs for life are rare. Although working for the Civil Service implies you need to get a life.

It is strange because many of the heroes and heroines worshipped by the young have put great effort into building the foundations for their life’s work. Most enduring ‘overnight sensations’ in every field have earned their spurs the hard way; if they hadn’t, the ‘overnight’ would measure the duration of their popularity. Nowadays (in most instances) if you can’t walk the walk then it doesn’t matter how fluently you talk the talk. Talking the talk does not mean there is merit in endlessly posting on Facebook or tweeting interminably.

Sir Winston (the quotee above in case you’ve forgotten) in his younger day had plenty of his own attitude. He must have been a serious pain in most parts of the body not just the neck and the butt. He didn’t get much better as he got older according to reports. Luckily for him, with the war on, his attitude was just the one the Brits needed. (You can chose your preferred war because he was actively engaged in at least four – Afghan, Boer and Worlds I and II.)

Your own attitude reflects how you are going to deal with the world at large and is a product of many things: your nationality, upbringing, age, emotional and mental state, and so forth. It is also affected by the attitude of others you encounter at any particular time. Everyone has had a cheerful, reasonable mood shattered by the surly abruptness of what the Germans call a ‘beampter’, a far broader version of what we might know as a ‘jobsworth’.

On the frontier there seems to be three distinct national attitudes although I have to admit to large areas of blurring. Blurring in Alsace is hardly unusual, not because the wine is very good, but because in a long life the area has changed hands between Germany and France more than a few times. National attitude is difficult to distinguish if you’re not entirely confident of which nation you belong to this week.

One look around and it is easy to sink into stereotypes. This is not surprising since the much maligned stereotype is actually a shorthand version of what you generally see about you. It is not a lazy inaccuracy as many would imply. It is a generalization conscious of inherent faults = so don’t give me any attitude about stereotypes.

The German attitude here tends toward the ordered, efficient, law-abiding, correct and car loving. The French one is more carefree: they eat better, dress better and take life less seriously although they pretend to have deep philosophical ideas about it. The Swiss attitude is entirely pragmatic. They tend to a Madonna view. That is her of ‘Material Girl’ rather than Jesus’s mum. And the BIG difference means that the Swiss get all the gravy and don’t feel bad about pretending they care.

Tales from the Frontier - No. 10

What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman - Lord Byron

One thing Byron did know a lot about was ‘strangeness’. He was wildly unconventional for his time. He behaved as he wanted. If there had been a Georgian #metoo campaign he would have topped the poll for the number of accusers. Men and women. Not that he didn’t have a lot of satisfied customers as well. He would have slotted in here better than he apparently did in England – what is usual in this place is the unusual. Border towns encourage a variety of people and plenty of odd behaviours.

Obviously the three main nationalities predominate: the orderly Germans, the stylish French and the acquisitive Swiss. But currently there are also any number of immigrants who have made the journey from various lands south of the Mediterranean. What do they find ‘strange’?

‘Strangeness’ is difficult to define because it depends upon your standpoint. For example, what could be more strange for someone coming from the windswept desert-like land of the South Sudan than a grown man in funny coloured trousers chasing a small white ball merely to bash it often enough to drive it into a small hole in the ground? And these comically clad people purposely build large pockets of sand in a green fertile land.

I guess the funny coloured clothes wouldn’t alarm African and Indian ladies, who celebrate a wide assortment of gay patterns in their dress. Coats of many colours don’t signify for haute-couture conscious French damsels who strive to find exactly the correct shade of accessory to match their costume. Many of the lady members of our golf club have matching grips, gloves, bags, wooden tees, and head covers which blend nicely with their slacks and polo shirts. Their object seems to be to look enchanting and to navigate the course with a minimum of creasing and wrinkling to their natty outfits. Most Arabic ladies have no such problem: black goes with everything, they don’t play golf, and a non-ironed burka doesn’t look out of place anywhere.

What must seem odd to many foreigners from male dominated societies is that it is the men not the local women shoppers who lug the heavy carrier bags and struggle with the laden wire trolleys. In the Middle East I have seen a woman with a five gallon jar on her head, leading a goat and several children, a jumble of kindling stuffed under her arm, following her husband who was trying to look important whilst managing to multitask waggling a camel stick and simultaneously chewing qat. A local man’s place on the border is not so clear cut or so easy.

The Swiss lady, if accompanied by a husband taking a break from bank duties, carries the important purse and doles out the franken. The male’s job is to shepherd the purchases. You can understand why a Chelsea tractor is necessary to accommodate the contents of several crammed supermarket trolleys.

The French ladies don’t carry anything in case it chips their nail varnish. All right, maybe a pigskin Gucci or suede Chanel handbag. Their chaps scurry around like sheepdogs manoeuvring a flock whilst juggling packages from the better shops. Their ornamental partners stand about posing and looking good. These lasses must really hate it when they have to climb into a tinny Citroen or Renault when others have the pleasure of sliding onto the soft leather seat of a classy BMW or Mercedes.

The Germans seem good at sharing tasks, which is not surprising since many of their womenfolk are as powerfully built as the men and sometimes more aggressive. Beer and würst puts hair on the chest. The independent frau is a good example for the newcomers.

Immigrant women are beginning to find their feet, which are increasingly less hidden by floor-length shapeless black. Jobs are hard to come by but more and more supermarket checkouts bleep at the hands of a lady whose customers have never heard of the foreign currency she was familiar with at school. It was rather odd the other day coming out of a shop where seven of the nine women shoppers or staff were wearing headscarves and yet within sight were three different hairdressing salons – all busy. You wonder if the ladies are sad that so few get to admire their neat new coiffures.

Odder perhaps are the many examples of Thai massage parlours in the area. Or perhaps not so odd since the average male border dweller’s body has an abundance of flesh that would benefit greatly from being pounded into shape by an expert masseur or masseuse. Paying to get beaten up is probably a status symbol for the Swiss who admire anyone with currency to spend. Money promotes strange habits.

Tales from the Frontier - No. 9

The place is very well and quiet and the children only scream in a low voice - Lord Byron

Byron’s ‘the place’ doesn’t exist in the real world. Few young children I’ve ever met would recognise the concept of ‘low voice’ and not one would apply it.

The other night everyone was restfully banging out the zeds under their duvets. Peace reigned. One child, age undetermined, went off like a siren heralding an assault by a squadron of bombers. Everyone noticed. None of us had noticed when the kid fell asleep in the first place but we all were aware when the sleeping discontinued. This seems very unfair. Sound engineers need to research the nature of silence and make it more aggressive. We’ve all been disturbed by a sudden crashing sound but never overwhelmed by an unexpected blast of quiet.

Generally speaking our little enclave of maybe fifty families is ‘very well and quiet’ and Lord Byron’s observation would fit the bill. But very intermittently. The interruptions are legion and like the Romans of that name they make their presence felt. Peace may be shattered in a variety of ways.

The Hausmeister is responsible for the building’s upkeep and also for the surrounding gardens. Unhappily he is something of an equipment nut. He has a machine for everything and they are all driven by what sounds like turbo-props. He has grass cutters, hedge trimmers, leaf blowers, rollers, rotor-cultivators, insecticide sprayers and a diesel van to load and off-load them. He likes to flash them up in the early morning following a televised sporting event on the US west coast. Witnessing a transmission of the final round of golf in Pebble Beach or the end of the Superbowl means crawling into bed in the advanced early hours of the morning – just about the same time as our Hausmeister is getting out of his pit and heading towards the hangar that houses his latest mechanical toy.

The variety of gardening equipment is matched by the variety of games that are played by the youngsters in the central area between the flats. A large chess or chequers board is integrated in the central flagstone design but no modern child plays these silent, contemplative games. The kids indulge in football, cricket, tag or anything that involves pounding feet, shouts, cries and appeals. Screaming in a low voice is one of the skills yet to be learned. Screaming in three and four part harmony seems to have been mastered. Even hopscotch appears to engage the vocal chords rather more than might be expected. One Indian family plays makeshift cricket using a wheelie bin as stumps. The three boys are no great shakes but the young girl bats like a Big Bash or IPL star and the tennis ball thuds round the walls in every direction. She has great skill because so far we have not been treated to the shattering sounds of an imploding window or glass balcony door.

Grown-ups aren’t left out. We have, as multi-culti Germany does have, a decent percentage of Turkish folk living here and they do like to get married. Weddings always involve drums and a very big noisy penny whistle (I don’t believe this is the technical term) which has a wail designed to levitate cobras from wicker baskets. The bridal conga takes place round and round the chess board and the songs without words possess at least a hundred verses. The building walls are designed to keep the music from escaping and reflect it and amplify it in every direction. I’ve been in concert halls with less effective acoustics. The celebrants then drive off in a fleet of flag-bedecked cars honking wildly all the way down the road.

The direction and strength of the wind is important when it comes to noise level. To the north is the football ground and although the attendance is roughly the same as a Commons debate on rural drainage, the crowd is rarely heard; the screams however, resulting from mistimed tackles, carry easily on a light breeze. To the distant west lies the airport and with only a medium-sized gale the Easyjets can be heard revving-up and taking off. In the opposite direction is the railway goods yard and the long line of empty freight wagons belting out of Switzerland rattle like Jacob Marley and his chains. If there is a fog and no wind then the occasional blast of a foghorn from a barge ploughing up the Rhine gives mournful accompaniment to the Hammer House of Horrors mistiness.

Ambient noise is a problem of the past for most inhabitants in this town. I strolled to the local Lidl recently, which is packed with Swiss marauders (see TFTF – No. 2), and at least half of them were plugged into mini headsets. I made a face at a passing baby and elicited a howl of rage but not one person connected to Spotify, Pandora or Apple Music even raised their eyes. I wonder if Byron was listening to his inner music when he was in ‘the place’.